It's like my head

The problem here is that small and preliminary studies are reported on as if they are big news. Preliminary studies, however, are exploratory, which means they are likely mostly wrong. Their purpose is only to inform later confirmatory research. Reporting the results of every preliminary study causes a great deal of confusion by putting out into the public (sometimes with press releases and misleading headlines and reporting as above) lots of ideas that will turn out to be wrong.  

The net effect of this is for many ultimately wrong conclusions to be reported to the public. This also leads to a great deal of conflicting conclusions being reported, which causes the public to lose faith in the whole scientific enterprise. The news media makes it seem like scientists themselves are constantly crying wolf about a new cure for cancer, obesity, or the common cold, or that they are constantly flip-flopping on core ideas of science.  

How many times, if you believe headlines, has Einstein finally been proven wrong, or have scientists been “baffled” by some conclusion in science we thought was solid? It also seems like every week scientists have discovered a battery breakthrough, or finally cracked the solar power problem. If you believe science reporting, any day now we will be flying around in solar powered cars with high capacity batteries, piloted by an artificially intelligent onboard computer.